I. Field
The present invention relates generally to electronic circuits, and more specifically to a quadra-polar modulator for use in communication systems.
II. Background
In a typical communication system, traffic data is first processed digitally to obtain coded data. The coded data is then used to modulate a carrier signal to obtain a modulated signal that is more suitable for transmission over a communication link. Modulation may be broadly defined as a process whereby one or more characteristics of a carrier signal are varied in accordance with a modulating wave (see also, IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronic Terms). The carrier signal is typically a periodic signal (e.g., a sinusoidal signal) of a particular frequency. The modulating wave may be derived from the coded data and may be provided as an inphase (I) modulating signal and a quadrature (Q) modulating signal. Typically, the amplitude and/or the phase of the carrier signal are varied by the modulating signals. Information would then reside in the changes in the amplitude and/or the phase of the carrier signal.
Various architectures or schemes may be used to modulate a carrier signal with data. These architectures include quadrature amplitude (QAM), polar, and linear amplification with nonlinear components (LINC) architectures. Of these three modulator architectures, the QAM architecture is the easiest to implement because it can accept the I and Q modulating signals without any pre-processing. However, this architecture may suffer from poor noise and power performance. The polar architecture requires complex pre-processing of the I and Q modulating signals but, if properly implemented, can provide good noise and power performance. The LINC architecture also requires complex pre-processing of the I and Q modulating signals and is not in commercial use at the present time. These modulator architectures are described in further detail below.
Each of the three modulator architectures described above uses different circuitry to perform modulation and has certain advantages and disadvantages relating to implementation complexity and performance. It would thus be highly desirable to have a modulator architecture that can be implemented easily and can also provide good noise and power performance.